Public Service Announcement

Public Service Announcement: Cowpox is not vaccinia.
Cowpox is not vaccinia.
Cowpox is NOT vaccinia.

OK? Geez.

(this is something I didn't know either until I started working in a poxvirus lab...I wish "science writers" for lay audiences would stop perpetuating this inaccuracy. one hears it all the way through undergraduate. it's like Protestants thinking the Immaculate Conception refers to that of Jesus and not Mary (I thought that was the case until college too).

yes, Jenner did originally start "vaccinating" people with cowpox, but as the virus was propagated in cows, buffaloes, horses and other four-legged animals, at some point it was replaced with vaccinia, which is another poxvirus but genetically distinct. i.e. vaccinia isn't a derivative (descendant) of cowpox.

In case you're wondering what set me off, I'm reading Steve's mum's Christmas present to me, John M. Barry's The Great Influenza, about the 1918 flu pandemic.